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A man passes by a TV screen showing images of President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea on May 25. | Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo

Trump: Plan for June summit with North Korea's Kim 'hasn't changed'

The president describes good will amid new discussions, after sending a letter to the North Korean leader on Thursday saying it would be 'inappropriate' to proceed.

President Donald Trump on Saturday said that the plan for a June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore "hasn't changed" and is "moving along very nicely."

It was the clearest statement yet of the president's desire to proceed with the historic sit-down despite sending a bluntly worded letter to Kim on Thursday apparently calling off the event.

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Speaking in the Oval Office as he welcomed an American prisoner released by Venezuela, Trump said: "A lot of people are working on it. It's moving along very nicely. We're looking at June 12 in Singapore. That hasn't changed. And it's moving along pretty well, so we'll see what happens."

A White House advance team is scheduled to depart Sunday for Singapore via Japan for a round of planning meetings aimed at holding to the initial June 12 date.

Trump in his Saturday evening remarks also hinted at additional meetings “going on as we speak in a certain location which I won’t name, like the location, it’s not very far from here.”

A CIA spokesman said the agency could not offer guidance and referred questions to the White House.

Kim met Saturday with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a key figure in brokering the U.S.-North Korea détente, to discuss getting the Singapore meeting back on track.

Later Saturday, Moon said Kim committed to the summit with Trump and complete denuclearization, The Associated Press reported.

Trump has in recent months reversed course from his early escalation of tensions with North Korea – referring to Kim as “Little Rocket Man” – and instead sought to be a peacemaker on the Korean Peninsula. He abruptly agreed to the June 12 meeting in March during a visit from South Korean officials, surprising his own top aides and sparking talk of a Nobel Peace Prize.

Thursday’s abrupt cancellation, in the wake of a no-show by North Korea for a planning meeting in Singapore, has been followed by a series of conciliatory remarks from Trump.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said Friday as he departed for the Naval Academy graduation ceremony in Annapolis, Maryland. “It could even be the 12th. We’re talking to them now. They very much want to do it. We’d like to do it. We’ll see what happens.”

The president also set off a firestorm earlier Saturday with a tweet objecting to a New York Times report citing an unnamed White House official saying that it would be “impossible” to stick to the June date after the halt in planning. Trump suggested the official cited was made up, but in fact the official spoke Thursday at a background briefing organized by the White House and attended by POLITICO as well as numerous other news organizations.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reaffirmed Saturday that the White House advance team would head to Singapore. “The White House pre-advance team for Singapore will leave as scheduled in order to prepare should the summit take place,” Sanders told reporters Saturday morning.

The manifest for the trip to Singapore, obtained Friday by POLITICO, includes a large advance team led by deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin and special assistant to the president Patrick Clifton. Also on the manifest: director of presidential advance Bobby Peede, Bill Hughes, Ben Miller, Hannah Salem and Rebecca Wasserstein.

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The team is set to arrive in Japan on Monday and will leave for Singapore the same day, according to the manifest.

Trump's letter to Kim and statements from his top aides have framed the potential summit as a boost for Kim, with Sanders saying it would "be great for the world and certainly would be good for North Korea."

In White House remarks late Saturday, Trump added: "I think people want to see if we can get the meeting and get something done. We got that done and we can be successful in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, that would be a great thing for North Korea, it would be a great thing for South Korea, it would be great for Japan, it would be great for the world, it would be great for the United States, it would be great for China."